Page 28 of Telling Tales


  “If I had any guts, at this point I’d draw the line, say ‘step over it one more time and you’re out of here.’ But having let myself be used and abused to this point, I’ll be a coward and capitulate again. March to the beat of your drum. Besides, I have to admit, grudgingly, now I’m rather curious to see how it turns out.”

  “Good boy. Just remember, governor, there’s comfort in surrender. In discipline you find your freedom, as a philosopher once put it.”

  #

  “Afraid I’m going to have to ask whether you might happen to have a book in your raincoat pocket, sir,” the policeman said apologetically.

  “I do. But it’s not a stolen book.”

  “Could be there is some sort of mix-up?” the gnome suggested. “This gentleman here does not look like a thief. Or act like one. He was not running away.”

  “Well then, just ask him whether he took the book that’s in his pocket from a shelf in the stall,” the woman in the green dress put in.

  “Well, did you, sir?” the policeman inquired.

  “I did.”

  “Now ask the proprietor standing here next to me whether he came into the bookstore and paid for the book,” the woman, who seemed to be the director of the little drama, went on insistently.

  “No,” the gnome conceded after a considerable silence. His no made the woman in the green dress nod her head in agreement. For his part the gnome sounded as if he were reluctant to admit to a wrong he’d done. With a chest the size of a wrestler’s, his voice was surprisingly deep, full and rich, like the sound of a contrabassoon. For no apparent reason his face went into a dimpled smile.

  “Sir, can I have a look at the book…in question?” Pausing and adding “in question” made the policeman sound very official.

  “Certainly, officer.”

  Extracting the volume from the left-hand pocket of his raincoat, he extended it to the policeman, whose gigantic hand made the book seem even smaller than it was. Letting it fall open, the policeman glanced at the inside of the dust…

  #

  “May I?”

  “What polite irony. To ask permission when you’ve already done what you pretend to be asking my consent to do.”

  “Such pat phrases are an accepted convention, as you well know, governor. Keep things civil on the surface to avoid provoking the hostility lurking beneath to snarl and show its fangs.”

  “Between us, it seems to me, civility has never shown itself. But proceed. Whatever it may be this time, get it over with.”

  “Not at all what you’re imagining. Fact is, you’re doing so well, moving straight ahead, you ought to be able to finish up without my being all over you. Now you’re getting it right. Resisting impulse. Letting it have its way. Without flummery. No excess. Eye on the book. Assuming you don’t eat lunch before one, you should have it finished with time to throw some water on your face. Relax with a beer or whatever. Congratulations.”

  For a good thirty seconds I stare at him. Speechless. When I do reply, I try to keep all irony from my voice.

  “Why, here’s a sea change. By so tactfully withdrawing you make me realize, full of irritation, resentment, yes, downright hostility as I confess I’ve been, it may be I’ve misjudged you. The confidence you’ve just expressed in me gives me confidence in myself. After all that doubt. You know, when I’ve wound it up, so to speak, maybe you and I can part as friends, after all.”

  Friends? Afraid you’re pushing it. Asking too much of both of us. We do have widely different intentions and goals. Not bitter enemies, perhaps. But let that pass. What will be, will be. From here on in, I’m leaving it in your hands. Now really, it wasn’t so hard once you knew what was being asked of you, was it, governor?”

  “It was gut-wrenching. I’m back at it.”

  #

  …jacket and squinted.

  “Is this your book, sir,” he asked clapping the volume closed and handing it to the gnome.

  “To be truthful,” the gnome replied, “so many books come and go in the stall, I cannot keep them all in my head.” He had very small white hands, which had no hair on them. In his pronounced Germanic accent “books” came out as a rhyme with “spooks.” Opening the front cover, he paused. “I do see one dollar ninety-five cents here on the flyleaf. This is where I mark the price. In pencil, as here.”

  “Do you remember writing a buck ninety-five there?” The policeman asked. “On the flap of the jacket it says four ninety-five. It’s printed there.”

  “I cannot say I do,” the gnome replied, narrowing his eyes behind the thick lenses of his glasses so they seemed almost closed. “Though it could be my writing. To be priced so low, the book must had been on the shelf for a long time. Probably years. Maybe going back to the previous owner.”

  “So I guess you’re not willing to swear it’s your book. In court, I mean. Under oath.”

  “Well,” the gnome responded, with hesitation in his voice and manner as he handed the book back to the policeman, “although in line with what this lady says, it appears the book was taken from my bookstall. But I am not going to press charges against anyone for a dollar and ninety-nine cents when the book has not sold for many years. Added to this, it is not worth my time.”

  Shaking his head slowly and breaking into a smile, the gnome washed his hands with air, as if cleansing them of the touch of the book. Having no option but to receive what was thrust back upon him, the policeman mashed his lips together and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Still and all, the man did steal the book,” the woman in the green dress insisted. Her face was white marble. “He thought I didn’t see him behind me while I was rooting around in a trough. But I had been keeping my eye on him, over my shoulder. Because he was.…was acting suspiciously.”

  “What do you have to say to what the lady here says?” the policeman wanted to know.

  “What she says is true. But I didn’t commit a theft.”

  The woman in the green dress let go a trilling laugh of derision. Knocking his cap askew with the formidable knuckles of his right hand, the policeman scratched his right temple with the fingertips of his left hand.

  “I honestly don’t understand.” While maintaining an attitude of respect and a tone of politeness, the policeman did stress “honestly.” “If you admit you took the book from the shelf as the lady here says and you didn’t pay the owner of the bookstore there for it, how can you claim you didn’t steal the book. I don’t want to make a big thing out of a buck ninety-five, either. But stealing…”

  “I didn’t steal the book. The book is mine.”

  “Yours?” the woman in the green dress hooted. “I find it strange that a book you agree you stole from the shelf of the stall is yours.”

  “Maybe he does not have a dollar and ninety-five cents to spare,” the gnome ventured to say, as he looked the accused up and down, seeming to assess his jeans and brogans, both of which, along with his raincoat, showed considerable wear. “And maybe he wants the the book so badly he really believes it is his. Such things do happen.” He frowned and cocked his head philosophically.

  “Whether I have a dollar and nine-five cents or not has nothing to do with it. I don’t want the book at all. That’s why I removed it from this man’s shelf.”

  “But why would you take the book if you don’t want it? And how can you claim a book the owner of the bookstore is trying to sell is yours?” the policeman, throwing the gnome a nod, asked patiently.

  “Because I wrote it.”

  A moment of silence. The little crowd that had collected, finding they were audience to nothing more exciting than a verbal confrontation about a book, had gradually been drifting off. Straightening his cap, the policeman cocked his head and pinched his bushy eyebrows together. The gnome was still smiling, enigmatically. Vigorously the woman in the green dress shook her head. The way she was holding her face suggested she was about to stamp her fo
ot on somebody’s face.

  “May I have the book,” she demanded of the policeman, then grudgingly added “please.”

  “Of course, madam,” he replied, handing her the little volumethat now had been passed around the little circle.

  The woman in the green dress studied the back of the dust jacket, then stared at the man in the black raincoat.

  “Here’s a photograph of the author,” she announced. “He’s clean-shaven, dressed in a suit and a tie, looking like a professional man—a doctor or lawyer or maybe a college professor. Now I ask you,” she went on, making her case by holding the volume so first the policeman, then the gnome could see the photograph, “can that possibly be the man who stole the book?”

  “Guess I must agree,” the policeman answered slowly, as if deliberating with himself, “there’s no resemblance that I can see. What do you say, sir?” he then asked, turning to the gnome.

  “True, it does not look much like him. But in my trade I’ve learned that dust jacket photographs are not to be trusted. If you could see some of the pictures of gorgeous women and handsome men that in the flesh are downright ugly…”

  “Of course it’s not me. It is who I was. Then.”

  Turning the book over and holding it high, close to her face, to keep what was on the front of the dust jacket from being visible, the woman in the green dress snapped, “What’s your name?”

  “Call me Fels.”

  Narrowing her eyes to slits and puckering her lips as she lowered the book, the woman in the green dress smiled. “Ah ha. It just so happens that’s not the name printed on the dust jacket or,” she went slowly, as she opened the volume, “on the title page. This book was written by one Felix Els.” The smile made her satisfaction apparent.

  “The author might be using a pen name,” the gnome suggested hopefully, making clear which side of the split jury he was on.

  “It’s not a pen name. My name, madam, when the book was published and I was another person, did happen to be Felix Els. The name Felix, which either suggests a cartoon cat or, when translated back into Latin, from which it comes, means fortunate or lucky, was imposed on infant me. It was the Christian name of my paternal grandfather, whom, though no longer winning with us, lo these many years, I still despise. By ridding myself of the “elix’ of my loathsome given name and prefixing the remaining “f” to my surname, thus collapsing three syllables into one, I became another person. Fels. That’s my name.”

  “Implausible as it sounds to me, you’re certainly quick to come up with an explanation for the discrepancy. Be that as it may, everyone must have a given name and a surname. By law. In our society. Am I correct, officer?”

  Although the policeman dipped his chin once, rather ambiguously, the woman in the green dress proceeded with her cross-examination without waiting for a verbal affirmation of her point. “And the publisher? If you wrote the book, as you claim, tell us who published it.”

  “It was long ago and I can’t quite recall the name of the publisher. Although it really doesn’t matter, what I can tell you is it was a small press, as they’re called. Something like ‘A Finger up Yours Press.’”

  “Hmmm,” the woman in the green dress whinnied, lips pressed together to show she wasn’t to be thrown off by a scrap of smut.

  “How about the title?” the gnome asked brightly. “Surely you will know the title.” Then he added with tardy reluctance, “If it is your book.”

  “That’s right,” the policeman agreed, seemingly inclined to aid the defense against the prosecution.

  Another measurable silence.

  “Well?” the woman in the green dress broke it by demanding she be answered, “what is the title of what you say is your book?”

  It came slowly, a word at a time, as if each syllable were resisting utterance.

  “A …Tale…Told.”

  “That is what it is,” the gnome cheerfully confirmed while the policeman energetically nodded his head. “Just that.”

  “Still, it proves nothing,” the woman in the green dress flung at the policeman, proddingly. “The fellow had every opportunity to read—”

  Abruptly she broke off. Her stony features collapsed into dough. Then, as she knowingly nodded her head, they slowly reconstructed themselves into a slight smile.

  “You know,” the policeman said, removing his cap and running his fingers through his wavy black hair, “I can’t make anything out of this. Man here says it’s his book because he wrote it, which it does look like he might have, but the lady saw him take it from the shelf and stick it in the pocket of his raincoat, which he agrees he did, and you do have to wonder why he’s wearing a raincoat on a hot sunny day, yet the owner of the bookstore isn’t sure it’s his book and doesn’t want to prefer charges…besides, the book’s only worth a buck ninety-five, which is hardly grand larceny…all of which adds up to I can’t see enough evidence to take the man into custody. Do you agree, sir?”

  “I do agree,” the gnome almost purred. He was still beaming a cherubic smile. “And even if it were my book, it’s been standing in the bookstall so long…well, I say, if he wants it that badly the gentleman is welcome to it.”

  “All well and good,” the woman in the green dress pronounced, then went on in a surprisingly softened tone, “still I’d like to ask a few questions.” She waved the book she was still holding at the man who had and hadn’t stolen it.

  “That’s between you and him. Nothing more for me to do here.” The policeman put his cap back on and nodded his head to indicate he agreed with himself. “I got a beat to cover and you never know.” Touching the peak of his cap with the tips of his sausage fingers, he began whistling as he sauntered off.

  “Think I should return to the shop. I would not want anyone to pocket one of the books in there whether he had written it or not. Out here,” the gnome gestured toward the stall as his smile altered from cherubic to that of a clown who’s just discovered the joke is on him, “I just have to trust people over what is really only peanuts.”

  The few passersby who had remained until the policeman had gone his way had gone on theirs, leaving only the woman in the green dress and the man she’d accused of theft standing on the sidewalk.

  “Do you mind, Mr. Els? I only want to…”

  “Fels is the name.”

  “I’m sorry. Mister Fels…. I merely want to satisfy my curiosity. You see, I too am a writer of books. I’ve written quite a few, in fact.”

  “Shoot. But drop the ‘mister.’”

  “Just what is your book about?”

  “Wrong question. What the book’s about doesn’t matter.”

  “Well, perhaps then you will tell me what kind of book it is. To what genre does it belong—fiction, poetry, biography, memoir, trav…”

  “It doesn’t belong to a genre. It is what it is.”

  The woman stroked her long chin and pursed her lips.

  “May I ask whether you’ve written any other books.”

  “No.”

  “No I may not ask or no you haven’t.”

  “Take it whichever way you want.”

  “I should think you’d be gratified, maybe a bit proud, to have come across a copy of your book, even though it was in a secondhand bookstall.”

  “No to proud, yes to gratified.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand the distinction you’re making. Is the reason you stole…”

  “I didn’t steal anything. Paying for my own book would be an absurdity.”

  “ …you took the book be that you don’t have a copy. Or have very few. Might the book be out of print?”

  “Wrong. Last thing in the world I want is a copy of the book.”

  “But you’re the author. It’s your book. And you do have a copy of it in your raincoat pocket.”

  “I was and I have. That I’ve acknowledged.”

  “And it has been published. Small press or not, it’s in prin
t.”

  “That too is undeniable.”

  “You make it sound like a crime. Or a sin. Forgive me for saying your reasoning just doesn’t make sense. To me, at least.”

  “It’s not supposed to.”

  “Just because my curiosity’s been aroused, let me see whether I understand what’s going on. You don’t want a copy of the book you wrote yet you went out of your way to get your hands on a copy. If it hadn’t been for that easygoing policeman and the soft-hearted owner of the bookstore, at this very moment you could be under arrest for theft.”

  “Right.”

  “Then why did you slip the book into the pocket of your raincoat, which you must be wearing for that express purpose, and carry it off?”

  “The answer’s obvious.”

  “Not to me it isn’t.”

  “Then I’ll spell it out. I want to d. e. s. t. r. o. y. the book.”

  “But even if you shred the pages of the copy I’m holding, the book will still exist. It has been written and published. By you.”

  “Unfortunately you’re right. In the abstract. The material fact is I can and will destroy this copy. As I’ve destroyed every other copy I’ve managed to lay my hands on in bookstores and bookstalls I’ve come across as I travel around the country.”

  “And how do you destroy your books?”

  “I burn them.”

  “You what! Burn them—that’s what the Nazi’s did. May I ask how many copies you’ve succeeded in locating and have burned?”

  “This makes thirteen.”

  “But surely there are other copies. In the hands of individuals who bought them, perhaps some in libraries, unsold ones in bookstalls and shops in other cities and towns, as well.”

  “Mighty few. I do what I can.”

  “Although I hesitate to ask this question, I must. Why do you want to burn your own book?”

  “I’m not going to tell you.”

  “I’m averse to burning books, the woman declared, shaking her head in obvious disapproval. “Because of the association.”

  “Because of the association,” he echoed under his breath.

  Quite a long silence. In it he suddenly realized that the woman in the green dress bore a striking resemblance to the English teacher he’d had as a sophomore in high school many years ago. They hadn’t got along. One afternoon she’d summoned him to her office when classes were over for the day and had accused him of plagiarizing a story he’d written about a boy killing his first deer. When she’d asked him whether he’d ever shot a deer, he’d told her he hadn’t and never would. Then she’d insisted he’d stolen his story from a published story, by a famous author, he’d never read, about a boy killing his first bear.

 
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